The Jokers

Violence and Derision, the story of a battle between the have-nots and the haves and the powerless and the powerful, where all the art and ingenuity and moral advantage lies with the outcast and the downtrodden, is set in the capital of an imaginary (but all too imaginable) Middle Eastern country governed by a tyrannical buffoon. A small number of dedicated opponents to the regime band together to fight the inanity of power with the power of ridicule. They begin a poster and graffiti campaign that is intended to provoke the population at large into an uprising of irresistible hilarity. Albert Cossery was a French writer of Egyptian origin, who led a dandy’s life of determined leisure for all his ninety-some years while turning out a handful of perfect fictions—delightful anarchistic fables featuring a cast of lowlifes and no-goods, and combining perfect stylistic poise with ferocious satire.